A Contradiction In-Between

My life could pretty much be a case study on in-betweens. This does not mean I need to be studied, like some rat running through a twisting, turning maze…but I’d understand if some scientist thought he could benefit humanity by analyzing and studying my thought process. It’d be nice to know it was good for something. Maybe it would help the rest of the world to better understand how one can go from start to hold to re-start to the eventual...unfinished.

I’ll give you a classic example. Look at this picture and tell me what you see:

I’ll tell you what you see: You see a big lesson in contradiction, insanity and desperation….THAT’S what you see.

Let’s break this down, shall we?

• Ignore the dust. I’ll get to it.
• You can’t see out the window, but that’s a backlight-issue with the camera and it’s raining anyway…nothing to see folks…move it along.
• See the lovely window fan…not in the window as you might expect (silly reader!) but on the floor? Notice the red LCD readout prominently displayed, showing it’s still very much plugged into its power source? That’s from one day a week ago, when the temperature hit close to 78 degrees outside and this room hovered at around 84. Said fan has been removed from said window however due to the return of damp, raw COLD air. Being the optimist I am though, I’m keeping it within arms reach in case Mother Nature goes all hot flash/menopausal on us again.
• See the black furry lump, with just a hint of chestnut peeking through? That would be ‘Nomie, in his standard puppy-sleeping-position…curled up in a tight ball...one ear haphazardly flipped over the edge of his doggie-bed. Say it with me now: “Awwwwwww!”
• We may as well get the cute stuff out of the way: The framed photo is of me (around age 4) with my arms around the willowy waist of my mom, smiling adoringly at me as if I was the best thing to happen to her (which I’m sure I was until my little brother showed up). Now, say it again: “Awwwwwww.” Not everyone participated that time. Duly noted…I know who you are.
• See that attractive silver-pillow-resembling, duct-taped-encrusted thingie…half hanging from the wall? (I’ll give you a moment to scroll back up)………………………………………………….
  "What's it covering....and what IS that stuff?" you ask. It’s the previous owner’s attempt at decoratively displaying the room air-conditioner. (“We meant for it to be there…in the middle of the wall…really. The stained fake-mahogany molding just proves it.”) That silver stuff is insulation I found in the garage. I’m sure you’re familiar with the duct tape. This was my desperate attempt at keeping the frigid winter air outside from making its way inside to my room, where it would undoubtedly get all comfortable, thereby creating its very own indoor wind chill and preventing the temperature from ever rising above 65 degrees until at least May. Are you wondering why it’s half on and half off? I was thinking the same thing. I guess duct tape doesn’t hang on forever, as we might like to believe. I'm starting a pool to see how long it'll take before it completely loses its grip and lands on the dog's bed. Oh, and for the record, the curtains were my half-baked attempt at covering up the very, very SHINY insulation which is the first thing one’s eye is drawn to upon entering the room, but I have to pull the curtains aside each morning or it’s too dark in there to find my slippers and I keep tripping over the (black) dog.
• And, finally. Do you see the spackle-smeared mark on the wall? Right near my iPod on the nightstand? You know there’s a story for that. The master is the first room I decided to tackle in my effort to rid this house of its 20 tons of wallpaper, covering every available square inch of wall space. You can only imagine my surprise…(no. my utter SHOCK) when I pulled the wallpaper away only to discover the jagged, WET crack in the sheetrock that lay beneath. It starts from the corner of the window frame and works its way out towards my bed…like tentacles, reaching for its prey.

Ultimately, I did the only thing I could do: I stopped working on the bedroom and moved on to the bathroom. (Ahem…not the bath from the dirty water picture…the master bath.) When I am in a more fiscally-enlightened state, I will entertain bids and have the mental clarity to listen to some contractor explain the nuances of waterproofing and replacing said sheetrock.

For now it seems to have stopped leaking, so I'm temporarily golden.

So, you see…this is a small window into my world, which is in a constant state of “in-between”. I consider this to be one better than my usual “mental snapshot”, so I want points to reflect this.

I normally wouldn't want anyone outside of my family to witness such an obvious example of my ineptness…but HEY…it’s not MY doing. I’m just living with the fallout. And subsequently showing YOU the fallout…

…only for you, people….

…only for you.